Homemade Natural Cough Surup

Ayden's cough is hanging on. It's not terrible and we feel that coughing can actually be a good thing since it helps break up congestion. It's like a fever, the body knows how to take care of itself. It is actually best not to suppress a cough if your child is otherwise fine. If said cough is keeping the whole family up at night, however, it is time to suppress it. I made a 3 ingredient home made cough syrup that we are very comfortable giving to Ayden as often as we need to throughout the night.

Ingredients:
1 cup lemon juice
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 1/2 cups honey***

(We only had 1/4 cup of olive oil, though, so I just halved the recipe)

Directions:
Combine all ingredients in a small sauce pan over medium heat until steaming, but not boiling. Then transfer to a mason jar (or, in our case, an old honey jar). We gave Ayden a teaspoon before his nap (though he didn't end up going to sleep at that time) and a teaspoon before bed. It seemed to quiet his cough earlier in the day and we will see how tonight goes.

Honey has been used for a long time to soothe sore throats but now you can find it in many natural over the counter cough medicines. You can read a little more about honey as a cough suppressant here. Lucky for us we'll have our own honey soon enough! The lemon juice has lots of immune boosting vitamin C and the olive oil helps it go down smoothly as well as offering it's own array of powerful anti-oxidants that add support while the body fights germs. No "inactive" ingredients to be found in this cough syrup!!

***I should mention, however, that it is not advised to give honey to children under 1 year of age due to the risk of a form of food poisoning called botulism. Ayden had his first taste of honey in the icing on his birthday cake (though he didn't eat much...).

We spent soooo much time outside today! My sister and her family came and the kids had so much fun playing around the farm.

Here are a couple more cute pictures from our day:

Exploring diameter... The bone is too big to fit into the jug.
He wasn't buying it...

"Helping" Mommy with the dishes.  He got pretty wet...

I am excited about this upcoming week and it will end with my birthday and the arrival of our bees!!!!

Let me know if you give this cough syrup a try and if it works out for you!

~Sarah